Chalk up another win for the NHL owners, and another loss for the players.
The league declared that despite the overwhelming majority of the players wanting to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, its athletes will not take part in the international competition, and the matter is “officially closed.”
Of course the owners didn’t want their employees to be put at risk while playing for their native countries, nor to interrupt next season for two weeks. Once again, they won out, and it might create some sticky situations with players dedicated to representing their countries.
“We have previously made clear that, while the overwhelming majority of our clubs are adamantly opposed to disrupting the 2017-18 NHL season for purposes of accommodating Olympic participation by some NHL players, we were open to hearing from any of the other parties who might have an interest in the issue (e.g., the IOC, the IIHF, the NHLPA) as to reasons the Board of Governors might be interested in re-evaluating their strongly held views on the subject,” was how the league’s released statement began. “A number of months have now passed and no meaningful dialogue has materialized.”
The owners had wanted to use the participation in the Olympics as a negotiation tactic to extend the collective bargaining agreement, but the players union (NHLPA) didn’t want to start going down that road.
“Instead, the IOC has now expressed the position that the NHL’s participation in Beijing in 2022 is conditioned on our participation in South Korea in 2018,” the statement said. “And the NHLPA has now publicly confirmed that it has no interest or intention of engaging in any discussion that might make Olympic participation more attractive to the clubs. As a result, and in an effort to create clarity among conflicting reports and erroneous speculation, this will confirm our intention to proceed with finalizing our 2017-18 regular season schedule without any break to accommodate the Olympic Winter Games. We now consider the matter officially closed.”